Game design with Noah Falstein, part 3: Natural funativity theory

Natural funativity theory is Noah’s own work. You can find the original gamasutra article here. What I present here are only my notes on the subject, my personal interpretation of the theory. Hope you find it useful.

What is fun?

Dictionary: Enjoyment, a souce of amusement (that does not help)

Consider underlying reasons

“Funativity”: Thinking about fun in terms of a measurable cause and effect

Inevitably this leads to “Why do we commonly share the experience of fun?”

Evolutanary roots:

We must look to our distant past

Young mamals play to learn basic survival skills

Games are organized play

Human entrataiment is more complicated

Entretaiment is Learning:

Life is either work, rest or entretaiment

Perhaps at first it was all work or rest

Play (and fun) may be neotenal traits

Fun is about practicing or learning new survival skillin a relatively safe setting

People who didn’t experience were less likely to survive to become our ancestors

Natural Funativity Theory:

Basic concept is that all fun derives from practicing survival and social skills

Key skills relate to stone-age human life, but often in modern context

Three cathegories: Physical, Social, Mental

Physical fun:

Sports generally enhance our strength, stamina, coordination skills

Exploration is fun, both of local area and knowledge of exotic places

Physical aspect to gathering “stuff”

Hand/eye coordination and tool use are often parts of fun activities, crafts

Social fun:

Storytelling is a social activity, a way to lean important survival and social lessons from others, our first VR

Gossip, bonding with friends aids survival

Flirting, showing off, finding mates is a key component in social fun

Language has become paramount

Mental fun:

Pure abstract reasoning practice is fun

Pattern matching and generaion

Music, art, puzzles, all pattern based, both perception and creation

Gathering has also a mental aspect: categorizing and identifyng patterns

Multipurpose fun:

Many fun activities have physical, social and mental aspects in combination

Games that mix these aspects tend to be very popular (e.g. Blizzard games)

Incorporate ways to practice these skills to increase popularity of games

Noah also mentioned that Diablo 2 was a great in combining the 3 types of fun. You have great physical (hack and slash mechanics, click click click), great mental (inventory, item management, etc) and of course, great social fun (multiplayer is great!).